Opinion: Crude Delivery

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... back to Opinion Journal I'm Mary Kissel ... last week America had two major oil spills ... but the media and environmentalists only seem to care about one of them why ... watch columnist Kim straw soul joins me on the line now from Washington can ... on the one he knew that in all the Exxon Mobil pipeline near Mayflower Arkansas ... on the other you've got a train derailment near a small town in western Minnesota ... what's the difference between the two ... although far as the one that's getting all the attention and getting the attention for very obvious that political reasons that ... this pipeline an Exxon Mobil has ... happened to be carrying crude from ... the oil sands in Canada down the taxes now this is the kind of crude ... that the Keystone XL proposed pipeline ... would also carry and so the environmental community in a lot of immediate highlighted highlighted ... this pipeline still saying look this is what's going happen if we accused on this and getting other reason not to let the practical for what ... you think and I I take the wide viewers that there might not realize that a lot of its crude has to be transported by rail ... because we don't have enough pipeline capacity is now right ... and that's why the actual far more interesting still wasn't that the one that happened a few days earlier ... I in western Minnesota a train derailed ... and quiet about this Mary is that ... this oil what we understand what we know is that this oil is going to get extracted one way or another there's a market for its in plentiful supply ... and it's going to have to be moved ... now you can deal with the pipeline which is purpose built it moves oil faster it has fewer leaks per mile ... than any other mode of transport or you can do it ... by putting on trains which is what we've been doing because we have outstripped that the supply of oil has outstripped pipeline capacity in this country so I whereas in two thousand and eight you go back a few years we were moving about nine thousand ... Up Oil train car carloads of oil on a rail system the year ... I did this last year was two hundred and thirty four pounds ... and of course when every Harlem or the EU and ... you had increased the ad at potential for there to be a derailment and allows the yen as it happens Warren Buffett a friend of the administration is making an awful lot of money ... on the train lines transporting the crude because Keystone is being built ... on the spot a couple new pulls up by few to show where public opinion is ... on the Keystone XL pipeline overall ... sixty six percent of Americans support the pipeline twenty three against when you break that down ... by party ... even more interesting figures here a full seventy percent of independents ... support ... Keystone can ... be our these numbers majority Democratic support way majority independent ... and Republican support is not moving the White House and all ... we just don't know I mean that you think that there is a great if you're out there among the environmental community that the White House is ... high in the still open to the idea of green lighting this project and ... not a surprise that the White House in your headline sensitive as this light has his ... eye he saw losses in part because Americans ... understand and like sheep energy they also see this as a jobs project ... and I think the pressure is going to increase on the White House to leave We continue to move in the spring as you know and we have all seen gas prices are going up ... on and so there is a lot of public support for moving on something like that and there's a lot of Democratic support in the Senate to craft ... that's right and you saw that demonstrated the eye and with the letters that they had sent that ... there had been some votes ... on their heads for certain when many members of the president's own party in support ... of going ahead with his pipeline so that when you see that ... the White House's delayed insulated baking they wanted to punch it past the election is can be harder for them ... to ignore it and I think it is very interesting question is whether or not things like these ... this oil spill that I plan also would likely not celebrating the grand scheme of things and that's enough to actually convince the White House that they should stop this project what is going to convince the White House to move ahead on Keystone ... second question Potomac watch columnist Kim straw sleepy near every week in a newspaper ... thank you so much for being with us ...